Tag Archives: United Steelworkers Union

Titan International Inc. has reached tentative agreements with the United Steelworkers (USW) unions representing its plants in Des Moines, Iowa; Bryan, Ohio; and Freeport, Ill. Votes are expected in the coming weeks.

Paul Reitz, CEO and president of Titan, announced the tentative agreements during the company’s first-quarter earnings call on May 4, 2017. The current labor agreements expired in November 2016, and operations at the plants have continued while both sides worked on negotiations.

“Titan has a longstanding, good relationship with the USW, as evidenced over the past couple of years when we worked closely together to present cases to the International Trade Commission (ITC) regarding OTR tires from China, India and Sri Lanka.,” Reitz said. “Their support in these cases was greatly appreciated and instrumental in the successful determinations from the ITC. For more than 20 years, we’ve viewed the USW and its members as an integral part of the Titan team and we appreciate their hard work in building quality tires day-in and day-out at our North American tire plants.”

The United Steelworkers (USW) union is praising the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) preliminary anti-dumping (AD) determination of tariffs of at least 20% on truck and bus tire imports from China.

The DOC issued its preliminary determination on Aug. 29. Importers will need to start posting cash deposits or bonds to offset dumping by Chinese tire producers at margins ranging from 20.87% to 22.57%. Preliminary countervailing duty margins were announced June 28 with margins of 17.06 to 23.38%.

When combined, the AD and CVD margins are nearly 40% on the truck and bus tire imports from China. The final USDOC rulings are expected in January 2017 with a final U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) determination next March.

The USW filed the initial petition on Jan. 29, 2016, that began the trade investigation.

In a statement issued by the USW, Leo Gerard, international president, said: “The government investigators and our trade counsel have been diligent in handling this massive trade case involving more than $1 billion value of truck and bus tire imports from China in 2015, increasing market share each of the last three years at the expense of American producers and USW tire production workers.”

He added, “Unfair truck tire imports from China have denied our domestic industry the opportunity to share in job increases during a period of robust demand growth.”

The chair of the union’s national rubber tire bargaining conference, USW International Secretary-Treasurer Stan Johnson, said: “Again and again China has been shown to benefit from massive subsidies and to engage in widespread dumping in order to gain market share at the expense of American jobs. Chinese truck tire imports have grown from 6.3 million in 2012 to 8.9 million in 2015 with an increased share of consumption of more than 36% by 2014.”

The USW represents 6,000 workers at five facilities in the U.S. that account for more than two-thirds of domestic capacity to produce truck and bus tires. The tire production facilities are operated by Bridgestone-Firestone, Goodyear and Sumitomo, and they are located in LaVergne and Warren County, Tenn., Buffalo, N.Y., Danville, Va., and Topeka, Kan.